Sunday, July 06, 2008

Best First Summer's First Saturday

Back in June, so many weekends ago, I went out to Coney Island to learn about the island life and the Island's Mermaid Parade.

At first it was me...

...and Amanda and Mackenzie. (I chopped their feet off myself. And it may seem obvious that some of these pictures were taken with a different camera--those pictures, the good-looking ones, those I took off Amanda's Facebook)

(later on there'd be more of us...that part comes later on)

Ok, let's go exploring! (This was my first time at Coney Island except for concerts)

Things Seen:

This taco stand looked magnificent. Make your guess now as to whether I came back to it later for lunch...

I love it when they're called "shrimps."

The Colossal and Soaring Wonder Wheel.

All the Wonder Wheel facts you could need...

We wound up at the Mermaid Parade staging area where paraders were registering for the parade.

Excuse me, I meant "pre-registering."

The Mermaid Parade has got stuff that's for grown-ups.

And stuff that's for kids.

And, on occasion, stuff for grown-ups & kids

Exploring, continued...

We explored all our way into finding Josh, Casey, and Regan.

Avengers Assembled!

We headed down to ride the Island-famous Wonder Wheel.

Si Non Oscillas, Noli Tintinnare The Wonder Wheel's features two "layers" of cars, the inner cars roll and swing on tracks. It's a frightful and fun experience as there is a strong sense of something-could-be-going-wrong here about it when the car starts rolling forward along its track.

In line, I promise you this is what Casey was saying: "Dude, feel my shirt."

All aboard for Danger!

Most of the ride is peaceful and fun, just like your typical Ferris wheel, but with views of Coney Island weirdness.

But then, twice a lap (we got two) there is the panic and horror of the sliding and swinging, which I will illustrate here with a screencap from a sliding-and-swinging videos instead of with an actual video:

Casey and Josh didn't make it into our car. The boarding of the cars was conducted in a constant evacuate-the-embassy sort of crushing panic with people being forced into cars that they were trying to get out of and pulled away from cars they were trying to get into.

Apparently the rule is that if you find a blue wall a picture gets taken.

Before getting lunch (remember, you still have the opportunity to guess whether I got tacos or not) we made the not-too-bright (at least for me) decision to ride a ride called the Saturn 6 (or perhaps that was Saturn 9?) which was like a really dizzy version of Dumbo's Flight.

This one ride it had winter sports murals intermixed with hip hop legend murals and they played real good rap music real loud. I really ought to tell you what I think of Tha Carter III sometime.

Time's up. If you guessed that I Did get tacos, Gongratulations, you win! And the thing is, even though these tacos have lettuce on them, they were really good. Like, "I will definitely get them again next time I'm at Coney Island"-good. I think being by the water and the fact that somebody nearby was playing Sublime real loud it all just came together right and it didn't matter if the tacos had lettuce on them or not. Everything was just a little perfect.

Bellies filled, it was finally time for what you've been scrolling down for this whole time: The Mermaid Parade!

Sea-Span weather-maids!

Some of our old pals from earlier in the day started popping up

This is us again.

Does this remind you of Arrested Development too?

Reverse mermaid. Kind of gross.

Parrot girl on stilts was the showstopper of the day.

And this was one of my favorite costumes of the parade

Hmmm...nope, sorry. Liked the little girl on stilts better.

Island Friends: Remember how weird this was?

After an hour and half or so we had seen enough and headed to the beach for a while. Went in the ocean, got wet, dried off, sat, went back to the ocean, worried about camera, you know, the usual. Also, before getting to the beach I got separated from the group and super-lost. Like, as lost as you get as a kid when you wander away from your mom at the department store.

After a bit I was done and headed back to Manhattan because I had somewhere VERY important to get to...

...a pig roast in Yonkers!! YES!

(You'd expect I'd have more to say about that, wouldn't you? Sort of feel the carcass says it all, though.)